


Chemical Reaction

by skitzofreak



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: CBRN, Chemical spill, F/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Nudity, Trust, Tumblr Prompt, Unresolved Sexual Tension, emergency procedures, no betas we find typos like men, realization of certain feelings, speed written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 10:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13233891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: They are almost to the door when Jyn falls.





	Chemical Reaction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thereigning_lorelai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereigning_lorelai/gifts).



> A tumblr prompt from [thereigning_lorelia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thereigning_lorelai/pseuds/thereigning_lorelai), who said:  
>  _jyn and cassian, absolutely platonic best buddies after surviving scarif, getting caught in some kind of contaminated rain or fog or whatever on a mission and having to take shelter - and having to strip down (to their underwear - like, nothing too sexual) because of contamination. sexual tension ensues but nothing happens. but they are super awkward after returning to base and don’t know what to do with all these feelings for their absolutely platonic battle buddy._
> 
> I know you also said it should end with a kiss and a happily ever after, but that would be, for me, another 6 chapters and 20k words minimum before I could get them to that point. Maybe if someone else wants to pick it up?

They are in the hangar when the alarm goes off. Right in the middle, nowhere near any exits and weighed down with heavy crates of supplies that Jyn had filched on their last op and Cassian was more than happy to include in his ‘objectives achieved’ column in the after action report. He had made a point of mentioning that Sergeant Erso had seen a target of opportunity and acted on her own initiative to provide the Alliance with vital engine parts needed by the desperately under equipped hangar crews.

But engine parts weren’t the only thing the hangar crews needed – they were short everything, from basic tools to oil cans to emergency containment field generators.

The alarm going off right now, an insistent and panic-inducing foghorn blare, is the last sound anyone wants to hear in a hangar with no containment fields. Cassian’s muscles lock up immediately, his heart rate kicking into overdrive. Next to him, Jyn turns her head and peers at him over the box she’s carrying – _fuck_ , she doesn’t know what that alarm means, she hasn’t been here long enough and there have been no containment drills because the damn field generators have been broken for weeks –

Cassian drops his crate with a crash and grabs Jyn’s arm. Her own crate falls a half-second later, and she doesn’t question him, simply follows as they sprint for the nearest hangar exit. Around them, the rest of the hangar personnel and various rebels passing through are also diving for exits, or pelting towards the giant hangar doors out towards the jungle. Jyn and Cassian bolt past a team of X Wing maintainers who have stopped to load a handful of astromechs onto a hangar cart, clearly determined to get their droids out of the way of the potential disaster. Jyn slows as if to help, but Cassian latches tighter on to her arm and stretches out his longer legs, forcing her to speed up to stay with him. She can’t help, and they _need_ to get out -

A thick, cloying stench hits him a second before the PA crackles to life overhead, the carefully modulated tones of an emergency response droid booming over the chaos of the evacuating hangar.  “Warning! Chemical spill in Hangar Three. Chemical spill in Hangar Three. This is not a drill! Evacuation plan Alpha, all units report to designated muster locations. CBRN Team One to Hangar Three. This is not a drill! Warning! Chemical spill in Hangar - ”

They are almost to the door when Jyn falls. Cassian’s arm wrenches back, his hand spasms around empty air and his stomach drops straight into his feet – he whirls around to see her on her hands and knees, scrambling to shove herself back up but her boots keep slipping. The dull grey dura-cement floor of the hangar is suddenly oily black with an ominous blueish sheen. A few steps behind her, a Duros is floundering on their knees, frantically slapping at their exposed skin as the blue-black gunk oozes over their hands and arms. Cassian's heart beat is thundering loud enough to drown out the blaring alarms and the shouts and howls of the other rebels all around him, but even as he dives back to grab Jyn’s waist and haul her up, the ooze surges forward like a wave (something big must have spilled, the hangar is practically _flooding_ , he can see crates bobbing and shifting on the shallow black sea). The wave licks up over his boots and worse, Jyn’s hands.

She jerks back, trying to rise up to her feet in one motion but she’s overbalanced and still doesn’t have good purchase, so her feet slip out from under her and drive her to her knees in the muck, which instantly soaks into her trousers. She doesn’t scream. The noise she makes instead is small and strangled, like a woman trying to choke back a sob, like a girl afraid to admit she’s in pain. It’s worse than a scream, and it cuts through Cassian’s chest like a knife but he has no time to process it, because the chemical flood is spraying up over the tops of his boots and leaking into his socks and _fuck_ his legs are on _fire_.

He gets his arms around her waist at last – it’s only been about two minutes since the alarms started, two minutes and an eternity – and he hauls her up but she won’t hold onto him, stretching her arms awkwardly out and away from him even as she trembles from the pain, so they are still off balance and struggling. The Duros is bleating. An astromech that was caught in the process of lowering itself from an X Wing beeps wildly, little sparks racing from it’s submerged wheels along it’s chassis towards it’s dome. Cassian’s legs burn, the fire licking from his toes to his shins. Jyn lunges towards the door, out of the worst of the chemical spill – it’s stopped rising, a small rational part of his mind notes, but it’s still ankle deep in most of the hangar, _fuck_ , who brought this much of a toxic substance in here? Was this an accident? Sabotage?

“Go,” Jyn grinds out between her teeth, trying to shove him forward without touching him, trying to keep from smearing more of the painful gunk on him even as her eyes water and her breath catches in pain. Cassian rips his mind away from hypotheticals and speculation and back to the present, where he needs to get her out of this, needs to get this stuff off their skin, then he can worry about –

 _“All personnel in the hangar, shield your membranes!”_ A new voice bellows over the PA, and a long, unbroken bell suddenly reverberates through the hangar. The Duros shrieks one more time then curls in on themself, the astromech’s sparking lights abruptly go dark as it switches to emergency mode, and Cassian grabs Jyn’s arms despite her protests and drags her close. There’s no time to explain, he simply wraps his arms around her head and buries her face against his neck, slamming his own eyes shut and holding his breath.

A moment later, thick orange foam erupts from the fire suppression systems installed all along the ceiling of the hangar, coating everything with a heavy blanket of suppressant. Cassian clenches his jaw and prays the CBRN commander knows what the hells they are doing, because this stuff was meant to put out X Wing fuel fires, and he’s not sure what it’s supposed to do about the chemicals except cause even more damage to the equipment in here –

Jyn twitches in his arms; she’s half covered in this shit, he needs to get her to a decon station and then medical now –

Her shoulders relax suddenly, and she takes a deep breath against his neck. Cassian instinctively presses her closer, trying to prevent any of the toxic foam from getting in her airways, then it occurs to him that the foam is no longer falling, and more importantly, his legs are not burning. Instead, there is a buzzing sensation all along his skin and a tingling in his muscles, as if his legs had simply fallen asleep and he is only just getting blood flow back. Against his back, Jyn’s hands shake, and then still. “Cassian?” She asks quietly, her voice tense but not racked with pain. Some of the terror leeches out of his guts and his heartbeat finally starts to slow.

Noise from nearby, the growing sounds of people shouting again, this time coming closer rather than bolting away. The Duros is no longer crying out, and the astromech gives a cautious whistle. Cassian risks cracking open one eye, and then both.

The world is orange. The foam has reacted with the chemical spill, turning the blue-black liquid into a dark reddish-orange sludge, while the foam that coats everything above the floor has almost instantly flattened into a neon orange coat of soap scum. Roughly fifty people and a dozen droids still in the hangar when the foam came down are huddled in various positions of stunned uncertainty, blinking or sniffing or brushing unhappily at the orange gunk all over their bodies. Sentients in heavy chem-suits are bustling through the nearby door, carting portable decon stations and various heavy machines that Cassian can only hope will be effective at cleaning up the colossal _mess_ of the hangar.

Jyn lifts her head from his neck to look at him. Her face and throat, he notes with a flood of exquisite relief, are clean of both the blue-black ooze and the fire suppressant foam, and the rest of her is bright orange but no longer shaking with desperation and pain. “Cassian,” she says in a harsh voice, a note of fear snapping his attention from her skin to her eyes. “How bad?” she croaks, leaning back slightly to look at him. Part of him wants to bark out an ironic laugh at her concern – _Force, woman,_ you _were the one who fell_ -  but the rest of his idiotic brain chooses this ( _wildly_ _inappropriate)_ moment to notice how the movement arcs her back and curves her body tight against him.

“ _Cassian,_ ” Jyn says again in that low, rough voice, and all the terror and adrenaline of the past five minutes (of the past two months, since the moment he dropped to the sands of Scarif with her in his arms, since he woke up in medical with her hands on his shoulders and her face above him, since he realized how like him she really was, down where it mattered), all of it transmutes in a flash into heat and need and shoots straight down his spine and into his lower body.

Which is pressed against hers. Cassian swallows reflexively and forces himself to let go of her, stepping back and away immediately, because _sweet fucking Force, get a grip, she is your partner, your friend, and this is absolutely not the time for your issues._

“I’m fine,” he manages to rasp out, just barely stopping himself from licking his lips (a tell that he has worked hard to rid himself of, which until Jyn Erso came marching into his life with her fierce glare and her sticky fingers, he had thought long conquered). The left side of his face tingles; he probably has the orange foam on his face. Jyn’s worried eyes flick to his, and she frowns and reaches up tentatively to brush at his cheek near his eye. Her hands are coated too thickly to be of any help, and she grunts and drops them to his chest, brushing ineffectually at his filthy shirt as the red-orange sludge rolls sluggishly around their ankles. Cassian should probably direct them over to the CBRN team, but he simply closes his eyes, his hands still curled around her upper arms, his heart thumping too hard in his chest due to terror and relief and a few reasons he is not even going to entertain in the privacy of his room, let alone out here in the middle of the forsaken hangar with Jyn _, his friend and partner_ , running her hands over his body.

“Over here, over here,” a muffled voice cuts into his tangled thoughts, and Jyn’s hands clench reflexively against his shirt in surprise before dropping away. Cassian opens his eyes to see a suited CBRN member waving her hands at them, pointing back a row of deployed decon stations where orange-covered people are slowly limping or shuffling or being helped into the curtained cubicles. “This way, please, into the showers, please deposit all outer coverings in a bin and make sure it is labeled with your name. Decon will get it back to you. Here, this way, please, two at a time, two at a time, only one for you, Lieutenant, you’re too big, sorry. Everyone else, two to a shower!”

Cassian and Jyn shuffle through the thin plastic curtains and into a single small blue cubicle, and the suited CBRN member tosses two plastic bins at them and a thick black marker. “Names on the bins,” she repeats, smiling distractedly at them through her clear face-plate, her attention mostly on the controlled chaos of the hangar behind her. “All outer wear in the bins. Anything you need returned immediately goes in this bin,” she points to a much smaller basket sitting in the corner. “And you can take it to Station Charlie, just outside. But first, all outer coverings off, and then stand in the shower flow until you hear the chime.” She points up at the ceiling and they hear a small soft _ping_ from the cubicle next to them. “Like that,” the CBRN member tells them, “The scanner will know when you’re clean. Keep your eyes and mouths closed under there, it’s cleanser first, then water. You’ll have to wear these afterwards, and don’t touch your gear after you’re clean, okay?”

She turns and shuffles out, leaving two plastic bins, two folded blue jumpsuits, two pairs of thin disposable sandals, and two silent rebels standing frozen in her wake.

The tingling in Cassian’s legs has escalated to an irritating itch that is almost enough to drown out the throb of his heartbeat under the rest of his skin. He sets his jaw and turns his back on Jyn, reaching up to work off his shirt, careful not to let the material slide against his face. Behind him, he hears her kicking at her boots and the faint clink of metal as she pulls her knives free from both sleeves. The boots go in the big bin, the knives in the small I-need-this-now bin. Her harness with her blaster and truncheon got in there as well, and she kicks the small bin across the floor to him so that he can put his own weapon inside, too. Cassian bites back a smile as he does so, and then throws his shirt in his clothing bin. He hesitates only a moment, because well, of course, but he’s also an adult and a professional and anyway, Jyn is his _partner_ , so he sucks it up and unbuckles his holster and then his belt. He hesitates again at his trousers but _damn it_ , it’s just adrenaline and relief and his still slightly giddy pleasure at having someone like Jyn at his side now, so he resolutely starts to strip.

Behind him, Jyn curses suddenly, and he feels more than hears her stagger to the side, another bitten off curse on her lips. Cassian whirls around, hands automatically outstretched, and Jyn freezes, staring at him. Her shirt is twisted half over her upper body, one arm bare, but she’s clearly unable to get it off without rubbing either the soiled material or her chemically-coated arms against her face. It occurs to Cassian, about three seconds after he has crossed the small space between them and caught her elbows, that his trousers are undone and hanging a few centimeters low on his hips, that his torso is bare and the cool air of the hangar is raising goosebumps across both their exposed chests. In his grip, Jyn shivers, and Cassian rubs his palms against her upper arms as briskly as he can to warm them, as if that was his intention all along, as if the only thing he’s thinking about is how kriffing cold she might be.

It _is_ all he’s thinking about. It’s all he has the right to think about. Jyn matters to him, she trusts him, and trust is one of the few sacred things he has left. He is not going to betray her by lusting over her just because they were caught in embarrassing circumstances. Cassian is damned in a lot of ways but he will _not_ be damned in this.

“Thanks,” Jyn says quietly, still leaning against his hands. Cassian nods, not sure what else to do. Outside, someone cries out in pain and a dozen raised voices respond in a professional gabble of medical jargon. The sound jolts Cassian back to the reality of their situation, covered in Force-knows-what and Jyn possibly in need of medical attention. He checks her hands but he can’t see under the orange to tell if she’s burned. She needs to get under that shower head. His confused emotional problems can wait.

“May I?” he asks carefully, dropping her arms but hovering one cautious hand near her bunched-up shirt. Jyn’s eyes widen, and he doesn’t miss the way they lock on his face – shit, too far, he’s gone and stepped over the line anyway despite his own fucking misgivings and now he’s broken her trust – and then she nods and steps closer.

“Yeah,” she says, a little too quickly, and jerks her chin towards her tangled shirt. “I can’t – I mean, this shite is all over and I - ”

“Don’t want to make it worse,” he nods, and her shoulders slump in relief because he understands.  “Close your eyes,” he instructs, and works his fingers carefully under the twisted part of her shirt, pulling it over her head and then over her other arm without ever letting the material touch her face. He throws the shirt in her bin, then carefully plucks her hairtie from her bun. The foam has hardened in her hair, making it keep the bun shape despite the lack of any other support, and Jyn frowns and shakes her head until the neat roll of hair falls at least partially apart. Cassian’s fingers itch to reach up and pull it all the way loose for her, to tug the dark locks around and spread them between his fingers –

\- which is not, at all, something he is going to think about again. She doesn’t need him to do that, and she certainly has not invited him to do it. Damn him and his libido and his idiotic neediness.

She’s still looking up at him, her eyes wary and her hands hovering awkwardly at her sides. Stupidly, Cassian nods to her like they are just passing in the hallway, and then he puts his back to her and waits a beat so she has time to turn away from him, reaching for his own trousers again.

“Cassian,” Jyn’s voice is low and soft behind him, and Cassian prays silently that she can’t see the way his skin is starting to flush a little just from that alone. The analytical part of his mind is already in overdrive – is he this sensitive as backlash reaction to the unexpected fear and pain? Is he reacting to Jyn because she is the first (organic) person to have his complete trust since he was a child? Is it perhaps some lingering mental issues from Scarif and Eadu and Jedha? Or has it just been so long since someone touched him that even the mere thought of her breath on his skin is making his muscles clench and his blood rush?

Or wait, is it the _chemicals?_ He really needs to get under that shower head too.

“I need help,” Jyn says like she’s wrenching the words out of her body, and it startles Cassian into turning around again. Jyn clenches her jaw and lifts her chin as if she’s just thrown down a gauntlet between them, and then gestures towards her neck. Her hands, now starting to crust over orange, have left nasty smears against her throat along the line of her kyber pendant’s cord, and he can see a slight reddening of the skin around the new marks. There are a few similar marks on the skin of her belly, just above her belt. She can’t get the rest of her clothes off without touching more of her skin, and Cassian’s hands are still almost entirely clean.

The roaring in Cassian’s ears drowns out the noises of the crisis workers outside the curtains.  But this chemical compound could be poisoning them for all he knows, so Cassian summons up every ounce of control he has ever possessed. He feels his face shift into neutral, his body relax into a disciplined stance, and he reaches for Jyn’s neck. He picks up the cord as delicately as if it might dissolve in his hands like tissue paper, and waits until she nods permission before he slides it up and over her head. He holds it up before her face, and he sees her hands twitch as if to reach up and grab it, then clench tightly as orange foam flakes off her knuckles. “I’m hooking it around my blaster,” he tells her, turning to the essential equipment crate and angling his body so that she can easily see as he does just that. “It won’t slide down through the holes that way.”

“Yeah,” Jyn’s voice sounds stressed but steady, and he watches her force herself to open her fists and unclench her jaw. It somehow loosens the tight knot of tension in his own gut, to see her fighting back her own nerves. Cassian stands and steps back within arms reach, holding his hands a few centimeters from her belt buckle and dipping his chin when she looks up at him. He uses every trick he’s ever learned to make himself look nonthreatening, hunching partially down so he doesn’t loom over her, keeping his chin down and his face as open as he can risk.

Jyn looks at him for a long moment, and then she nods and shuffles forward to close the last gap between them. “It’s okay,” she tells him softly.

Cassian drops the submissive stance and instead makes himself as professional and disinterested as possible. “As soon as I get these off you,” he says in a crisp, precise voice, “get under the shower head. I’ll put everything in the bin.” She gives him a curt nod, her own body language a mirror to his, but there are still a few tight lines in her stance that he doesn’t like, and her gaze is focused blankly on a spot just over his shoulder. “Jyn,” he says abruptly, waiting until she focuses on his face. “I won’t touch you except where I have to,” he says firmly, hoping she understands what he’s trying to say.

The hard lines in her posture that bothered him so much soften and relax. “I know,” she says, and then she looks him right in the eye and says simply, “I trust you.”

It almost tears through the professional mask, but Cassian has spent most of his life crafting the toughest of walls in the middle of the nastiest shitstorms in the war, so his heart stutters but his face does not. Quickly, trying his best to look at nothing but the material under his fingers, Cassian works open her belt, her trousers, and then with one last glance up to check that she’s ready, he hooks his fingers over the waistband of her trousers and her underclothes and pulls sharply down, dropping to one knee and keeping his eyes on his hands only. Jyn steps back and out of her clothes a hell of a lot more gracefully than he would have, if their situations were reversed, and Cassian unceremoniously dumps the bundle of soiled cloth in her bin. Or at least he hopes it was her bin. His chest is tight, his heartbeat is so fast that he worries she might even hear it, and if he’s not very, very careful, the heat pooling in his belly is going to start moving even further south and that is the absolute _last_ thing he needs because Jyn is still not entirely stripped.

A dozen curses run through his head, and he allows himself a moment to take a deep breath, and then he turns around to help her with the heavy black combat bra she wears – only to find that Jyn has stalked to the nearest shower head and slapped it on just as his gaze falls on her. The viscous liquid sprays out and coats her instantly, and Cassian blinks as he involuntarily glances down at her chest. She’s still wearing the black bra, although she is completely naked everywhere else. The clear liquid cascades down over her head, straightening the tangle of her orange-streaked hair and soaking the only item of clothing she still wears. Some idiot stray impulse makes him open his mouth, about to offer to unlatch the bra for her. But then she’s holding her hands up to the shower head, the orange gunk foaming up again and then running down her arms in brightly colored rivulets that stream down to her chest and then her hips –

Cassian turns on his heel, rips off his own clothes with brutal efficiency and no concern for how much of the orange shit he smears on his own skin, and marches to the other shower head. He remembers to close his eyes just in time for the warm cleanser to hit him, and he scrubs at his body as roughly as he can, scraping with his nails and forcing himself to focus entirely on the itching sensation in his legs. The warm liquid is a sharp contrast to the cool air of the hangar, and while he’s warm enough under the stream, his skin shivers and tightens wherever he is out of it. The tingling in his feet and legs is starting to fade, but not fast enough for his liking. It’s awkward to kneel down in the small cubicle to rub blindly at his shins and feet, but he needs this to be over as soon as possible, so he does it. For a brief moment he thinks he might have brushed against Jyn’s legs, his nerves lighting up like fireworks along the line of his wet, bare hip, but she moves away so quickly he can’t be sure and he’s not about to think about it.

They are completely silent, and Cassian listens to the CBRN team chatter, mentally mapping the cleanup effort already started outside, listening to mechs complain about the damaged droids and doctors yell for eye flushes and breathing tubes and various injection agents for the sentients who had allergic reactions. He doesn’t listen to Jyn breathing behind him, the sound of her hands on her own wet skin, or the flat, wet smack of her bra when she finally does peel it off and drop it carelessly to the floor.

“It’s ruined anyway,” she mutters, and he grunts noncommittally, rising back up to his feet as the liquid running down his face suddenly turns less viscous. It’s water now, he realizes, and gratefully swipes the last of the cleanser from his face so he can cautiously open his eyes. His shower chimes softly a moment later, and the water stops automatically. Cassian gropes for the thin, cheap towel sitting next to his folded jumpsuit. Jyn’s shower still hasn’t chimed, but that makes sense. She’d gotten it worse than him; she’ll need more time and cleanser. Cassian slips on the sandals and is about to walk out of the cubicle to give her privacy when he hears the CBRN member outside calling for another sentient. “I’ve got a clear spot in here, in just a second.” He hears Jyn draw in a sharp breath, and he immediately strips off the top half of his jumpsuit.

“A moment, please,” he calls through the thin curtain, then takes his time wiping off every drop of moisture he can imagine with the thin towel.

Jyn’s chime goes off a few minutes later, just as he’s trying to come up with another excuse, and he tosses her towel over his shoulder.  He hears her catch it, and then a series of quick swipes as she wicks off the water from her skin as fast as she can. “Thank you,” she says, and he knows she’s not talking about the towel.  

He doesn’t quite trust himself to speak yet, so he steps between her and the curtain opening in case anyone tries to come through and simply nods. Jyn dresses in record time in her own jumpsuit, and then they pad out into the hangar on their thin plastic sandals. Jyn hugs the weapons bin close to her chest, and Cassian takes the opportunity to discreetly check her hands and wrists. Slightly red, but she doesn’t hold the bin like it’s painful at all. His legs sting a little, still, but it’s more than tolerable. But then, she’d been a lot more covered, and she might have allergies she doesn’t know about. The CBRN team has set up an exam station just past “Station Charlie,” where they are meant to take their essential gear. It is little more than a long table with a series of harassed medical personnel swarming around the victims, checking sensitive membranes on various species and administering a few shots. Cassian eyes the nearest medic, debating the best way to talk Jyn into allowing the medic to examine her.

“I’m fine,” she says abruptly, setting the bin down at Station Charlie and shooting him a wry smile.

“Do you know what that chemical compound was?” Cassian asks in a reasonable tone that belies the fear curdling in his gut. “Do you know how you will react to the combination of the foam and the chemical?”

Jyn cocks her head and her smile widens, and Cassian realizes the opening he’s left her a moment too late. “Do _you?_ ”

“You might as well both get checked. It’s going to take me a couple minutes to clear this lot,” the CBRN member behind the Station Charlie table grumbles at them through his face plate. He points a gloved hand at their pile of weapons ( _Jyn’s_ pile of weapons, with Cassian’s blaster tucked on top and Jyn’s crystal dangling from the hilt), “This was _meant_ for, like, datapads and jewelry,” he says a bit repressively. "So I _should_ only take the necklace." Jyn’s face darkens and she glances down at the bin, then she steps sharply back from the table as if tearing herself away. Unfortunately, the move knocks her back into Cassian’s chest, and he steadies her shoulders, expecting her to pull away immediately.

She doesn’t. Instead, she leans back into him, and despite the cold hangar air, the chill of lingering cleanser in his hair, the uncomfortably thin plastic sandals on his feet, the crowds of hassled rebels all around him – despite all his professionalism and focus and background concerns about the potential sabotage that just happened in this hangar – Cassian is simultaneously awkwardly overwarm and far, far too comfortable with this situation.

Jyn leans back against his chest and Cassian’s hands tighten on her shoulders as the truth hits him like a blaster bolt to the chest, a blanket of thick foam, a wave of scorching light. He likes this, her warmth against his body, her complete trust that he will hold her without hurting her, her heartbeat pounding against his own. He _wants_ this. She’s his partner, his friend, his comrade-in-arms, his mirror. He followed her into hell, she dragged him back out again. He respects her skills, admires her tenacity and courage, and believes, absolutely, in her loyalty.

And he would really like to kiss her.

“It’s alright,” he says helplessly, lightheaded and more than a little wrecked by his newfound self-awareness. “You’ll be alright.”

Jyn nods unsteadily, and she lets him lead her to the medical station without resistance, pointedly not glancing back at Station Charlie and the bin that Cassian is careful to keep in his line of sight. When they get to the medics, he finds out why she was so compliant. “Him first,” she snaps at the medic, reaching back to grab his arm and shoving him forward.

“You were covered,” he protests, but the medic has already held a scanner up to his face, ordering him to breathe into the tube and calling for a clean needle from the orderly so he can take a blood sample. Cassian flinches at that, because his rational mind knows that this is not an injection, not an invasion, not a _threat_ , but needles and drugs are his enemy in the field, and he can’t shake his ingrained reaction to them even here. He’s just been attacked, intentionally or not, in his own base, _Jyn’s_ just been attacked, possibly hurt. He’s probably not going to relax again for a long time. Adding needles to whole business just seems…unfair.

“It’s alright,” Jyn repeats back to him as the medic rolls back the sleeve of his jumpsuit and ties the rubber band just above his elbow. She reaches out and grabs his hand, and when Cassian looks up at her, he sees the same fire that burned down Scarif before the Imperials could finish the job, the same fierce determination that had pulled him through the wreck of the tower despite the wreck of his body. Jyn winds her fingers through his and steps close, ignoring the look the medic shoots her. “We’ll be alright,” she says, light in her eyes and steel in her voice.

Cassian curls his hand around hers and barely notices when the medic jabs the needle in his elbow. He hopes the medic pays close attention to the vial, because his heart rate is still up and he’s probably going to fill it a lot faster than usual. He wonders if the medic will notice the flush in his skin or the need in his eyes, if the words might as well be written in his slightly orange skin: _Captain Cassian Andor is desperately in love with his partner and has no idea what to do about it._

Jyn takes a deep breath and runs her thumb over his knuckles, and Cassian decides he doesn’t much care what anyone can see, except for her.

“Cassian,” she says again as the medic pulls the needle from his arm and bustles away to label it. “We’re alright.”

He licks his lips before he can stop himself – and Jyn’s eyes flick down to follow the motion, her mouth tightening briefly.

A spark lights in his chest, a tiny flare of hope.

“Yes,” he says at last. “We are.”

**Author's Note:**

> [CBRN Response Team](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBRN_defense) = Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Response Team, and every military (and major organization that works with dangerous materials like, say, jet fuel) has something like it. Pronounced "See-Burn"
> 
> I've never been in a hangar that _didn't_ have a foam fire suppression system built into it, and I never, ever want to be.
> 
> They're fine, I promise. The very smart and competent commander of CBRN recognized the chemical compound that spilled and knew that the specific chemical compound of the fire suppression foam would turn the blue-black shite into something relatively harmless. Some people will have hives or need their optics flushed, but no one is seriously hurt, and the X Wings are completely salvageable. Naturally, the droids all need minor repairs, but they are the best off of the lot.
> 
> Hope this is what you were looking for, thereigning_lorelai!


End file.
